elchocoano
September 09, 2022, 03:40 PM
I'm reading a report which came out in February 2022 on crime statistics in Bogotá. The 16 localidades of Bogotá were rated acccording to total crime which occurred in 2021. Kennedy is worst, followed in second place by Engativá.
A Kennedy le sigue Engativá.
On reading this sentence, I first thought that I would have expected to see the direct object pronoun lo (or perhaps la), not the indirect object pronoun le. In other words, I took Kennedy as a preceding direct object with personal a.
To try to explain this grammatically, I looked at every usage of seguir in my Gran Diccionario Oxford, 4th edition, 2008. The only thing that I could find was an entry under transitive:
(en el tiempo) to follow: seguir a algo/alguien to follow something/somebody.
e.g.: los disturbios que siguieron a la manifestación; el hermano que me sigue está en Asunción.
With this, the only explanation for my sentence that I can come up with is:
We have a usage in rating order analagous to the time order entry in the dictionary. The preposition a is required but is not a personal a and does not indicate grammatical direct object. Grammatically, the object is indirect (thus explaining the use of le), but semantically the usage is transitive.
I'm concerned that my Oxford dictionary seems to restrict this usage to time order.
Thanks for any help with this.
A Kennedy le sigue Engativá.
On reading this sentence, I first thought that I would have expected to see the direct object pronoun lo (or perhaps la), not the indirect object pronoun le. In other words, I took Kennedy as a preceding direct object with personal a.
To try to explain this grammatically, I looked at every usage of seguir in my Gran Diccionario Oxford, 4th edition, 2008. The only thing that I could find was an entry under transitive:
(en el tiempo) to follow: seguir a algo/alguien to follow something/somebody.
e.g.: los disturbios que siguieron a la manifestación; el hermano que me sigue está en Asunción.
With this, the only explanation for my sentence that I can come up with is:
We have a usage in rating order analagous to the time order entry in the dictionary. The preposition a is required but is not a personal a and does not indicate grammatical direct object. Grammatically, the object is indirect (thus explaining the use of le), but semantically the usage is transitive.
I'm concerned that my Oxford dictionary seems to restrict this usage to time order.
Thanks for any help with this.